Why is the US far right finding its savior in Spanish dictator Francisco Franco?

[DBoon]

Some US far-right figures have made renewed attempts to rehabilitate the 20th century Spanish dictator Gen Francisco Franco in recent months, praising him as an avatar of religious authoritarianism, and praising his actions during and after the Spanish civil war as a model for confronting the left in the US.
Stephen Miller looks to his right.

But historians say that this Franco fandom is based on partial or revisionist accounts of the 1936-1939 civil war and Franco’s ensuing 37-year dictatorship and continues a long-term hostility to democracy on the American right.

It also comes as fears of authoritarianism and Christian nationalism in the US are on the rise with Donald Trump almost certain to win the Republican party nomination amid fears he would misuse his powers in any second term to erode or dismantle American democracy.

Franco, a general in the Spanish army, led a nationalist revolt against Spain’s democratic second Republic in 1936, and won by 1939 with the support of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Some 500,000 Spaniards died as a result of the war, with 150,000 of Franco’s opponents being executed during or after the conflict and half a million held in concentration camps by 1940.

Nevertheless, in October, Josh Abbotoy asked in an article at religious-conservative outlet First Things: “Is a Protestant Franco inevitable?” The article was a development from a May post on X, formerly Twitter, in which Abbotoy had more affirmatively claimed that “Basically, America is going to need a Protestant Franco”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/15/us-far-right-francisco-franco-spanish-civil-war

[Ocelot II]

1. Seriously?

[gratuitous]

2. They're really into Pinochet, too

Because they're all persuaded that they'll never be the ones shoved out the helicopter door.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Hey, Stephen Miller! Think about it.

[JHB]

4. Someone has been re-reading Brent Bozell Jr.

Not the guy still active today, who is "third of his name", but his father, who co-authored a defense of Joe McCarthy with William F. Buckley Jr., was a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater (including ghostwriting The Conscience of a Conservative), and was a Franco fanboy. BB Jr eventually had a falling out with Buckley (who apparently was not rigid enough in his ideology to satisfy Bozell) and basically flamed out, but still holds a place as a demigod in the Conservative Pantheon (which provided instant cash and a cushy career path for his son).

Bozell was such a fan of Franco that he moved to Spain, and his magazine Triumph (a kind of National Review for RW Catholics). It consistently held up Franco's Spain as a model to be emulated. The harshness and oppression of a dictatorship was a feature, note a bug, to him. He was another one of those people who didn't believe in separation of church and state.

[SarahD]

5. Franco's buddies

The answer to your "why" question is in your OP. The American right loves fascism because it's moralistic, judgemental and severe. Many Americans think it would be nice to have a leader like Franco because they would love to inform on their neighbors and see them dragged off and disappeared. You know the old saying about how Mussolini made the trains run on time. He didn't, of course, but many people still believe fascism makes society smooth and orderly.

[area51]

6. I thought the nazi party members

were in love with Viktor Orban.

[DFW]

7. A protestant Franco, now there's a laugh

I lived in Franco's Spain 1968-1969. As part of the rigidly controlled state TV news, there was almost a nightly report about which Catholic cathedral in Spain Franco's wife had prayed at that afternoon. Real vital national news, there. Opus Dei started up in Spain with the Fascists--yes, that same secret Catholic cult that today claims a couple of our Supreme Court "justices" as members. There is about as much chance of a Protestant Franco as there is of a white Elijah Muhummad.

Actually, as he aged and saw his country modernize, even Franco realized his country would not remain unchanged under the rigid fascism that was imposed when he took power. The country's economy had started to depend on the exploding tourism money from northern Europeans coming down in the summer, and the ideas brought in by the German, Dutch and Scandinavian youth were not lost on their Spanish counterparts. Franco had once told the king-in-waiting, Juan Carlos, "you will be able to do things I never could."

Actually, Franco wasn't even the top general intended to be Caudillo ("Fuhrer" ). That was to be the vain General Sanjurjo, who had planned his triumphant return to Spain from Portugal in a small plane loaded with his dress uniforms. This was at the start of the Fascist uprising in 1936. The pilot had pleaded with Sanjurjo not to take so much baggage on board, as the weight was too much for the plane to handle. Sanjurjo overruled the pilot, and was killed in the plane crash that occurred shortly after takeoff. That left Generals Franco and Mola. Mola was also then killed in a small plane crash. I guess the Republicans didn't invent this method of whittling down the competition after all.